Since the last issue of FOOTOTES in May much of our, especially Deborah’s time and energy has been consumed with the demanding details of the care of Edith Schaeffer, who will be 98 on November 3rd. By finding a way to give her the necessary amount of liquids and nutrients with a syringe through a nasal feeding tube she has been able live at home with her things, music and paintings rather than in an old-folks home where such intensive personal care is impossible. In England, we are told, people in her condition would be given morphine to slowly kill them. We have chosen life instead, and with the paid hourly help of a neighbor lady and from short-term helpers we have been able to continue Edith’s care, which is a draining effort.

Due to visa limitations we need a new person every three months, urgently from the start of January 2013, to step into the relay of helpers. A person with a European passport would be able to stay longer. Please try to think of someone who might be willing to come and help us in the carefully worked-out system of care.

We have enjoyed being back in Gryon after time in NY during the course I taught at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. As part of directing the Schaeffer Foundation here in Switzerland this autumn I teach a course for Pepperdine University in Lausanne and one for French pastors attending the Geneva Bible Institute on the influence of Postmodernism on the people they work with. In November I will preach in Lausanne for the International Evangelical Church. In December we will once again hold a traditional Christmas Eve service in Champery. January will see me first in Florida to give a talk “Alleviating Poverty through Economic Policies and Practices that Respect the Imago Dei” at an international students conference called by the Wilberforce Academy in St. Paul, MN.

In addition ProExistence, my first book, is again available with an added Foreword and a longer Afterword through Wipf & Stock publishers.

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There have also been times to catch up with family and grandchildren and to enjoy them. Gaston comes to dig canals through the dirt, starting from the fountain; Gabriela and Max were finally able to climb up to the tree house which their father reconstructed; Talia joins the others in playing with doll-sized dishes, bottles, with mud and leaves, to make pretend meals in the small cottage, as they call it, for us all. Seraphine is two and admires everything the big children up to six can do to have such a good time. Both Benjamin and Claire separately spent three days and nights with us.

Each, except for the youngest, goes to some school or other. Gabriela started a proper 1st grade this fall after two years of learning her letters, and to read in English and French, as well as many songs and poems by heart. For the annual march of all lower school children through town, ending at a large square with games and jumping castles (parents are allowed only to pick them up at a fixed time at the end), everyone had made a costume, e.g. a flower from paper with petals around the head.

I mention Gabriela, who is six now, because she also showed me a photo of her class. 18 children and two teachers spent the year together. Among the classmates are children with names like Arta, Blend, Stefan, Izel, Gonzalo, Adrian, Deiby, Eleonore, Zahra, Achille and Safwanur plus a few usual French names. Only three of the children have two Swiss parents, the rest are dual nationality citizens and children of immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers and displaced people. They come from about ten countries and mostly speak a foreign language at home. Yet each child has reached such a high proficiency of French by the end of the first two years that they can follow, write and speak in the common local language of French!

This is accomplished through a determined effort on the part of the teachers as well as the parents. The child learns, with the encouragement of the parents, the language that will be required to find their way, in school now and in life later. Parents may struggle themselves, but they want their children to learn the local language properly and thereby to open at least that door to a manageable life.

Teachers on their part give extra lessons apart once or twice a week to those for whom French is not the mother tongue, until they can understand what is going on in class. As a class they learn ballad-like songs of several stanzas, funny and serious ones, and surprisingly long poems. They are expected to explain what they do in “travaux manuels”, or what we would call crafts.

Efforts like that by teachers and parents are essential to become and be neighbors, pull a common weight and enter the work force at any level at a later age. We are struck by the ability of the school system to accomplish that, with some extra help for those coming without a notion of French. It is required by life in these surroundings that the skills are learnt. The insistence on one common language brings cohesion in the multiple backgrounds of the children and provides the tools to work together!

The common language is a grammatical one, more precise and demanding than English! Observing the result in Gabriela’s class (and in her way of now expressing herself, when she speaks only English at home) makes us wonder why this is not accomplished in other multi-ethnic and language settings.

Deborah helped in an after-school program in Harlem last year. She was constantly frustrated for the children, who after years of schooling could not read or write, could not express themselves or understand the words on the work sheets they had to identify, but for which they were still expected to find synonyms. These children of the fourth grade level do not have a chance to make it, to enter the community and then find a place of work. They will always be outsiders to the larger community and sealed within their tribal and language context…in the middle of New York City.

While they should not forget their cultural roots in matters of taste and memories, they must be encouraged to understand and follow the cultural identity of the world around them. They must not be locked up in a closed village, unable to look beyond it. They need the freedom to explore fields of their own responsibility, to have access to mental tools that open doors to the wider market of ideas. Only then will they be able to contribute by their worth and work.
Without that liberation, they are victims of neglect: of their parents first and then of their neighbors, including the churches. Consequently, they do not have an equal chance or opportunity to get ahead. They are put out to graze on their own, with growing frustration and discouragement as they get older, left more and more behind and eventually unemployable. They have not learned what is necessary to acquire any life skill apart from menial or criminal ones. Their life habits will be formed without the encouragement and corrective of better knowledge, without a community of better models, in the cauldron of neglected, forgotten and genuinely handicapped situations.

Already at this stage it becomes evident, prior to any political ideology, that people do not have anything like the often vaunted concept of an equal opportunity. Few opportunities fall into one’s lap, and then not in those early years. Helping children is not a matter of charity, but an obligation which we all have to our neighbors. For, the Bible’s command to love the neighbor as ourselves is not a matter of sporadic volition, but of duty!

The illustration of the Good Samaritan teaches that we have no right to be selective about who our neighbor is: It is anyone in need, whatever need it is, and without the 19th century disclaimer about an obligation only towards the “deserving poor”. What everyone deserves as a human being is that help which hopefully then renders him or her capable of taking responsibility for their choices.

One of the central problems is, of course, that we have largely limited help to material forms, forgetting that all people need loving parents, a secure setting, intellectual and emotional stimulation. Every one also needs a coherent explanation of life in the way the Bible lays it out from Genesis to Revelation, and the reward and respect that are due from efforts. These areas we easily neglect, seeing all such efforts as interference into the private sphere of others rather than as shared wisdom, efforts to restrain evil, and compassion for any person in the hardness of life in what the Bible describes as a fallen world.
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Every 1st of August Swiss people celebrate their independence from Austrian rule in 1291. After speeches and music, choirs and alphorns, the original pact is read. Here it is, just as applicable today as it was then, when representatives from three communities, today they are cantons, met to swear loyalty to each other:

IN THE NAME OF GOD – AMEN. Honor and the public weal are promoted when leagues are concluded for the proper establishment of quiet and peace. Therefore, know all men, that the people of the valley of Uri, the council of the valley of Schwyz, and the community of the Lower Valley of Unterwalden, seeing the malice of the age, in order that they may better defend themselves, and their own, and better preserve them in proper condition, have promised in good faith to assist each other with aid, with every counsel and every favor, with person and goods, within the valley and without, with might and men, against one and all, who may inflict upon any one of them any violence, molestation or injury, or may plot any evil against their persons or goods. And in every case each community has promised to succor the other when necessary, at its own expense, as far as needed in order to withstand the attacks of evil-doers, and to avenge injuries; to this end they have sworn a solemn oath to keep this without guile, and to renew by these presents the ancient form of the league, also confirmed by an oath. Yet in such a manner that every man, according to his rank, shall obey and serve his overlord as it behooves him. We have also vowed, decreed and ordained in common council and by unanimous consent, that we will accept or receive no judge in the aforesaid valleys, who shall have obtained his office for any price, or for money in any way whatever, or one who shall not be a native or a resident with us. But if dissension shall arise between any of the Eidgenossen (confederates; Eid = oath, Genosse = fellow, comrade ), the most prudent amongst the confederates shall come forth to settle the difficulty between the parties, as shall seem right to them; and whichever party rejects their verdict shall be held an adversary by the other confederates. Furthermore, it has been established between them that he who deliberately kills another without provocation, shall, if caught, lose his life, as his wicked guilt requires, unless he be able to prove his innocence of said crime; and if per chance he escape, let him never return. Those who conceal and protect said criminal shall be banished from the valley, until they be expressly recalled by the confederates. But if any one of the confederates, by day, or in the silence of the night, shall maliciously injure another by fire, he shall never again be considered a fellow-countryman. If any man protect and defend the said evil-doer, he shall render satisfaction to the one who has suffered damage. Furthermore, if any one of the confederates shall spoil another of his goods, or injure him in any way, the goods of the guilty one, if recovered within the valleys, shall be seized in order to pay damages to the injured person, according to justice. Furthermore, no man shall seize another's goods for debt, unless he be evidently his debtor or surety, and this shall only be done with the special permission of his judge. Moreover, every man shall obey his judge, and if necessary, must himself indicate the judge in the valley, before whom he ought properly to appear. And if any one rebels against a verdict, and, in consequence of his obstinacy, any one of the confederates is injured, all the confederates are bound to compel the culprit to give satisfaction. But if war or discords arise amongst any of the confederates and one party of the disputants refuse to accept the verdict of the judge or to give satisfaction, the confederates are bound to defend the other party. The above-written statutes, decreed for the common welfare and benefit, shall endure forever, God willing. ln testimony of which, at the request of the aforesaid parties, the present charter has been drawn up and confirmed with the seals of the aforesaid three communities and valleys.

So done in the year of the Lord 1291 at the beginning of the month of August.

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This pact is read out loud to everyone. It reminds them of the reality of threats to life, potential and real dangers in our world, where one must plan ahead for real and potential evil-doers. It also reminds them of the oath or bond sworn, which obliges everyone to be vigilant, “to stand up for each other assist each other with aid, with every counsel and every favor, with person and goods, within the valley and without, with might and men, against one and all, who may inflict upon any one of them any violence, molestation or injury, or may plot any evil against their persons or goods”.

The oath recognizes and repeats an obligation that goes further than acts of charity or neighborly care “ex post facto”, or after an event. There are legal obligations prior to the time when charity is called for as well. Charity repairs or diminishes existing damage. The law to “love the neighbor as oneself” always precedes the neighbor’s need and seeks to prevent it. In addition it does not leave the needed action dependent on the random will of the people or their gratuitous action in favor of another person. The, as Jesus says, “greatest law” states an obligation to us all, expressing a fundamental reality of God’s love for “the world”, which we are called to reciprocate.

In other words and employing current terms: Caring for one’s neighbor is not to trickle-down, but to pour out of an awareness that love in a fallen world must include practical care to attempt remedies for whatever ails my neighbor. They should not have to depend on “random acts” of kindness, but on the helping hands and minds of those who recognize the obligation for purposeful, pro-active, legally binding care for everyone in the human race. It is a minimum, not a gracious concession, as there is no such distinction as the deserving and un-deserving poor in the Bible.
We have no idea about the economic or spiritual state of the beaten man, whom the Good Samaritan helped without first inquiring further.

I can never change someone’s view, behavior or outlook. They must do that themselves. I am, however, obligated to encourage that change and to make it possible. I cannot change a person’s eating habits, their lack of physical activity and sleep, their poor reading habits, even their faith or their faulty reasoning. But I am obligated to demonstrate, explain and encourage needed changes. I am told to love such people as I should also love myself, whether with approval and disapproval; but never in rejection, indifference or any pleasure in their failure.

In close communities real needs are more readily recognized: helping hands, shared sorrow, a life shared with others in customs and work habits, in common texts and outlooks and faith. When generations live side by side, the opportunity to do shoddy work and get away with it through deception or neglect is vastly reduced. The education of children becomes a common concern in preparation for their growing up to be the new neighbors, your employees and the teachers for your grandchildren. In such proximity the pains of life are experienced and people work through their troubles. There is a geographical, social and cultural community between close neighbors.

There a common view of life, accountability for work, fairness in wages, honest measures and politeness are based on the realization that “all are better off if all are better off”. Economic productivity will be better when all are educated, keep well and pursue a common life as neighbors.

But a life together can no longer always be assumed, especially when neighborhoods break up and become more diverse. They may still be almost exclusively only geographical, now made up of individualists. Any true community with a common vision, rather than just a common income level or budget, will seal their commitment with an oath or promise, which must be constantly desired, defined and then pursued. It remains alive only as long as it transcends, or is independent of any economic or social differences or changing circumstances.

For continuity in a marriage, or growth in a garden, or maintenance of one’s health, as well as any community or a nation requires effort and work, an explanation repeated often to everyone and exhibited in daily conversation in one’s head, at work, at dinner and at school. It requires a fundamental embrace of its value, refined and confirmed through years of reflection and experience.

Regrettably, while the “First of August” oath is read and the anthem is sung every year, for many it has become a distant myth, a colorful anecdote. For them the event is the explanation on a sentimental level. Individualism and growing anonymity from increasingly separate lives diminish the practice of and reliance on neighbors and others. Borrowing from the 2nd law of thermodynamics, “the amount of available” commitment is constantly declining. Modern, individualized, life eats away at the consensus and gives each person a more immediate and egotistical focus.

In fact, over the past 35 or so years the reality of a coherent society pulling on the same string with varying strengths and divers priorities has been weakened. Many factors contribute to this. Among them are the desire to not be the odd country outside, as well as liberal drug policies, changes in educational content where liberating arts and humanities are replaced by more professional training, and a growing generational divide. The church has not addressed such issues, but rather leaves the discovery of truth to otherworldly spirituality and personal pursuits, both sensual rather than sensible proposals.

As a consequence, the public order which previously had been embraced by almost everyone increasingly needs to be imposed here is well as in other countries. It brings with it more laws, more regulations, more police activity attempting to catch up with the social train way down the track. The public order has been surprised by the speed of change and by the failure to admit that bad things can also happen among, and be instigated by, supposedly contented indigenous citizens.

15 to 20 cars are broken into every day in Lausanne, a city with fewer than 200000 inhabitants; drugs are freely dealt in the main square, dealers and consumers meet in public places. Those marvelous Swiss trains will sporadically have armed guards riding along at night. The conductor announces when pick-pockets are about. Two of our daughters found their apartments broken into. When one discovered used needles in the stairwell and alerted the police, their response was: “What do you want me to do about it?”

Instead of using the “broken window” policy, which helped to reduce crime in New York effectively, 20 policemen resigned from the local force this year already, including the chief of police. The laws are too weak and applied too superficially. The problem is not analyzed, but democratized, i.e. it is everyone’s fault: society, modern life, broken families. Yet no-one addresses issues related to drugs, crime, alcoholism and prostitution seriously in schools or elsewhere. There is no prevention or abstinence program in schools. Methadone replacement programs are funded and needles made available. That is hoped to improve behavior, but does not kick the habit.

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In both countries, Switzerland and America, the core of what was conservative thought and practice has gradually been diluted. We make it too simple for ourselves when we simply assume there the influence of liberalism. In the past that was a good term describing the liberation from authoritarian control, whether by the state, the church or even parents. For, none of these necessarily “know best” what is good for someone else and easily stifle beneficial progress. By the same token it would be foolish to simply affirm conservatism, for what ought to be conserved and what ought to be liberalized are questions every person must consider in light of the two texts or realities we have: book of God’s word and the book of God’s work, i.e. creation and the real world.

Failing to keep in mind simultaneously the shape of reality, and God’s word concerning it, conservatives as well became more liberal, diluting the former outlook by “liberating” themselves from social obligations to consider what is best for everyone. The inclusive emphasis of Lincoln’s Republican conservatism is now weakened, if not replaced, by an almost exclusive focus on economics and market conservatism. That leaves out the equally important conservative concern for a healthy base and social order for everyone. Any national conservatism would contribute beyond economic conservatism to efforts to teach and maintain intact families, to practice self-discipline in the place of selfish discipline, and contribute to a secure, educated and healthy generation of everyone’s children as future entrepreneurs, employees and morally and politically active neighbors. The currently proposed removal or reduction of funds for such efforts breaks with historic conservative goals and reveals a new ideology, selfishness and cynicism.

What complicates things is that both liberal and conservative advocates tend to hide behind labels and become less than truthful to gain control. They reach for power, while none grasps to solve the central problems of human social and moral reality. Both fear that their finest visions, once exposed to reality, may be no more than the emperor’s new clothes. Every claim of authority needs to be challenged in order to find out whether it is justified in the first place. We are part, after all, of a human race that is invited to question and argue even with God in pursuit of truth, justice and eternal life.

We inherit that from such arguing personalities as Job and Jesus, Moses and Jeremiah. They argue with God and demand broader understanding than what the moment seems to suggest or allow. Or take the Syro-Phoenician woman who argues with Jesus, come to minister to the Jews, that even the ‘dogs’, as the Gentiles were then called, get the crumbs that fall off the table. In our own history people like Hobbes and Locke argued on opposite sides for a better government that prevent evil and allow for greater justice to all people.

Therefore arguments for greater awareness of human diversity, for the protection, in an unfair world, of rights inherent in human nature as persons created in God’s image, and for greater tolerance when many things, ideas and choices transcend neat and narrow definitions, are now mostly claimed by liberals. Yet conservatives upheld them in the past. They should once again show their compassion and more creative ways to diminish conflicts, neglect and injustice.
This is not to liberate people from reality, , both chosen and inherited, but to demonstrate a greater recognition of a diverse and now also damaged and unfair human reality.

In it we are not only victims, but also obliged to be creative agents of change. Entrepreneurship is not limited to business cycles, but includes any activity in word and deed in which God does his work through human beings. As God provides bread through bakers, so will he provide skills through teachers, love through other people, and justice through sensible efforts to adjust an unfair situation to a lawful one. God did not call people to repeat and copy, but to create and explore what is good, colorful and coherent. People are intended to be agents of change: variety against repetition and improvement against injustice, wrong, death.

Conservatism in the past always had at least two components: a moral/cultural conservatism and an economic/structural conservatism. It seems that much of conservatism’s recent momentum comes from the latter and neglects the former. The problem is precisely not the economy, but the people and their way of “householding” their lives. The failure in the economy follows the failure in the people, who have not received a sufficient education, were not taught sensible morals or about the love for the neighbor as for oneself.

Many Christians have contributed to that failure by withdrawing from the public square except to demand acceptance of their point of view and practice. They have made claims, but not argued for it well, have wrongly set up absolutes where Scripture gives freedom, have abandoned the public school in large numbers to teach in Christian schools for fear that our children would not be able to argue with, for and against, what any teacher says.

Deborah recently wondered what would have happened if parents, who chose to educate their children themselves, had opened their homes as schools to an equal number of children from the wider community? We know that when a business pays better wages than what the market tolerates, the result will be better work habits, greater loyalty, larger returns on investment and a more trusting and open community with fewer crimes, boredom and despondency. “We are all better off if we are all better off”. Would the generation of our children not have been better off, if we had shared our better knowledge, if any, with more people?

This kind of idea does not get much traction in our contemporary culture, where open fields of arguments are seen as an impingement on personal views presented as personal freedom. The avoidance of the “road to serfdom” does not come from withdrawal, but from more constructive engagement. The improvement of education does not come from it being private, but from better sources and more reflection.

Back in the realm of economics, a little bit of Keynesian investment would have prevented Hayek’s experience of the road to serfdom! Would not directed investment in the education, health and social needs of our fellow citizens, neighbors all, help to heal the Darwinian tendency to insist only on one’s rights for individual survival: rights to entitlements, right to selfishness, right to live within everyone’s own little world?

These are not primarily matters of regulation and law, but of realism and compassion, of wisely investing for future results. Only when one looks on nothing but the ground on which one stands, does the consequence of such entitlement thinking escape our notice. Regulations must then point out, for the common good, what is necessary for a healthy society.

As Scripture tells us, “he who does not sin, does not have to be afraid of the law”. Only the sinner protests, because he delights in, and wants to protect, the power to sin more! In a truly educated and democratic society regulations are set against misuse of power, against dubious enterprise, against deceit, exploitation and lack of transparency.

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Paul reminds the Corinthian Christians in his 2nd letter (chapter 8: 7ff) that gracious actions on behalf of the Jerusalem poor start only once the law of tithing has already been kept. To that we are all bound from love of neighbor and submission to Caesar’s need to run a good government (Romans 13 and Matthew 22!). Loving our neighbor is not a matter of charity, but of obligation for everyone. So when Paul calls for charity, it is what goes beyond that basic obligation. Charity follows and does not replace legal obligations. Jesus had said the same to the Pharisees who taught that any funds given to the temple would of course not free a person from caring for his parents. Obligations bind us at all times, charity is a subsequent voluntary addition.

“But just as you abound in everything, in faith and utterance and knowledge and in all earnestness and in the love we inspired in you, see that you abound in this gracious work also. I am not speaking this as a command, but as proving through the earnestness of others the sincerity of your love also. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. I give my opinion in this matter, for this is to your advantage, who were the first to begin a year ago not only to do this, but also to desire to do it. But now finish doing it also, so that just as there was the readiness to desire it, so there may be also the completion of it by your ability. For, if the readiness is present, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have. For this is not for the ease of others and for your affliction, but by way of equality, at this present time your abundance being a supply for their need, so that their abundance also may become a supply for your need, that there may be equality; as it is written, “He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little had no lack.”

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I want to add a brief response to Dinesh D’Souza’s film “2016: Obama’s America”. He admits it to be a personal analysis, like seeing through a filter or presuppositions, an attempt to reveal the psychology of the president’s views and efforts. The film is a documentary based on his book about the roots of what D’Souza calls “Obama’s rage”.

I found the film well made, but flawed in content, poorly argued and devoid of the kind of facts one would need in order to undergird the interpretation D’Souza presents. He cites a number of sources, but creates his own context for them in order to maintain his psychological reading of Obama. Points are made without clear references and, where they are given, without consideration of the political or even textual context.

Were one, in the same way, to psychoanalyze D’Souza, who went to study in the US against his grandfather’s approval and there developed his anti-anti-colonial views, one could say that the triumphalism of D’Souza is rooted in the rejection of his grandfather’s anti-colonial efforts in order to prove him wrong. D’Souza never gives even a hint that immorality, exploitation and racism of the colonizers, contributed to the desire of many, including his grandfather, for liberation from colonial masters.

I met and heard Dinesh d’Souza when he became president of the King’s College, where I was teaching at the time in the philosophy department. D’Souza laid out his views on the same subject, claiming to have found the one key to Obama’s policies: to implement the anti-colonial views and efforts of his absentee father. He admitted to the students and the faculty, that he was out to damage the president. D’Souza believes that he has uncovered in.

In a nut shell, according to D’Souza, Obama is out to weaken, if not even destroy America. She is the enemy and must be brought down; she colonizes with her presence and must be dethroned. D’Souza sees anti-Americanism everywhere in the president’s policy proposals: from the statement in England, that many nations see themselves as exceptional (America is not alone exceptional) to bowing to foreign dignitaries (an American president is not supposed to do that; never mind being simply polite and not stiff like a North Koreans), from making investments in foreign oil exploration while limiting American ones, from suggesting negotiations rather than war over the Falkland Islands, to calling troops home from Afghanistan after the initial surge, to weakening the military so that she would never again entertain the idea of foreign engagements.

D’Souza chose a lens through which he sees the object. Since Obama’s father was against the British colonialists, the son will want to carry out the late father’s dreams. A psychologist, who never met the president and thus speaks in terms of generalities, is usurped by D’Souza to support his theory about a son taking on the father’s mission.

The argument is no better than the nativist one, that Obama is not a true American. The man is not liked, he is too intellectual, and though he carries on many of the Bush policies including bailouts, is a danger, out to destroy, demean and weaken America’s image abroad,...

…when in fact that had already been done to considerable damage within and without the US by prior administrations. For, the weakness does not derive from laws for a future healthcare obligation, but in an assumption of uniqueness or exceptionalism. People are always people, of the same family since Noah. Americans have at times and in places done exceptional things for which the world should be grateful. But they are part of the one human race, not a separate exceptional one as such.

In fact besides the unique stands and contribution to everyone, any exceptionalism also contains these negatives: the current poverty in health services, which make the country rank 19 among democratic industrial nations, where the high an infant mortality rate equals that of Morocco; 40% of children are born outside of marriage; the alarmingly low ratings in schools compared to the rest of the free world does not bode well for an economy that needs to create jobs requiring craftsmanship and intelligence; the neglect in infrastructure maintenance; the unusually high rate of incarceration (also for cheap labor) in private prison businesses show an exceptionalism that need correction urgently.

The film engages people afraid of obligations towards others, limits to individual freedoms and libertarian ideals. It says little about what made America exceptional in the past: the choice to work together, to depend on each other and to create and call for government as a help against all manner of danger and evil. The exceptionalism did not lie in a new kind of human being, but in new ways to address issues of the whole community and nation: parents, neighbors, employers and citizens.